shiny things in messy little piles

Category: #FridayReads (Page 3 of 5)

The Books of February

Read:

The Japanese Lover — Isabel Allende

The sto­ry of a Pol­ish refugee girl and her uncle’s Japan­ese gar­den­er’s son who fall in love, are sep­a­rat­ed, then  meet and sep­a­rate repeat­ed­ly over the course of  life time. We learn the sto­ry of their romance as the girl, now in her old age, slow­ly reveals the romance to her young immi­grant care­giv­er and her patient but per­sis­tent grand­son. It’s a vast sto­ry with all of the ter­rors of the mod­ern world in it. Nazis, the Japan­ese intern­ment, the chaos in mod­ern Balka­ns, child abuse, and on and on, but it’s all so good-natured that you don’t real­ly feel any of the hor­ror you ought to. As much as you’ll like that char­ac­ters you won’t feel any deep emo­tion­al tie to them. The sto­ry is epic in scope but it nev­er quite grabs you by the scruff of your neck like so many of Allen­de’s sto­ries do.

*Like­able char­ac­ters, no great dra­ma in spite of the settings.*

The Girl in the Spider’s Web — David Lagercrantz

I decid­ed to read this in spite of all the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing it’s writ­ing. (There were estate issues fol­low­ing the death of Stieg Lars­son. The right to pub­lish new books in the series has been the sub­ject of ugly lawsuits.)

I prob­a­bly should­n’t have both­ered. It’s flat. All of the dan­ger to our favorite pro­tag­o­nists (and I love both Blomquist and Salan­der) is nar­rat­ed rather than shown. And the twin sis­ter’s sur­prise appear­ance at the end? What the fuck?

It’s orig­i­nal­ly is Swedish of course. So I can’t tell how much of the awk­ward writ­ing is in the orig­i­nal and how much is in the trans­la­tion. But there are so many missed oppor­tu­ni­ties for depth. The rela­tion­ship between Lis­beth and the savant boy in particular.
I fin­ished it quick­ly. But I prob­a­bly won’t pick up anoth­er book in the series. And for what it’s worth I think the Swedish movies/TV series does the best job of por­tray­ing the characters.

* The book is not near­ly as inter­est­ing as con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing it’s publication. *

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim — David Sedaris

Clas­sic Sedaris. Not his fun­ni­est but hey, dys­func­tion­al fam­i­lies are only par­tic­u­lar­ly fun­ny if you come from one. Even then the sto­ries don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly stick with you. I can’t pick out a favorite because — well I don’t remem­ber any of them.

* Why did noth­ing stick with me? *

Radiance — Cathrynne Valente

So glad that I gave this book two chances. (I lis­tened to it last month.) The sec­ond time through I was final­ly able to fol­low the many char­ac­ters and con­vo­lut­ed time line. Can I just say right here that if I need the lit­tle dates that you put at the head of the chap­ter to fol­low the shift­ing time peri­ods in your book you’ve got a writ­ing prob­lem. I should be able to tell from the first three sen­tences in a chap­ter who’s talk­ing and at what point in the story.

That said, Valen­te’s deep dive into the world of cin­e­ma or rather what it would look like in her wild­ly improb­a­ble but appeal­ing alter­nate uni­verse is a lot of fun and filled with love­ly prose touch­es. Just take it slow­ly and don’t feel stu­pid if you have to look back to the begin­ning of the chap­ter to fig­ure out where in the sto­ry you are.

* Valente returns to lyric but read­able prose *

Loitering — Charles D’Ambrosio

I do not want my essays about lit­er­a­ture quite so com­min­gled with the tragedies of the writer. In fact it bores me. Yes, if your broth­er com­mit­ted sui­cide you will have a dif­fer­ent take on a lot of Salinger than if you had­n’t had the expe­ri­ence. And yes, there is prob­a­bly see sort of essay in that but not one so plain­ly try­ing to dis­guise itself as aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly accept­able lit­er­ary criticism.

DAmbro­sio is high­ly praised but I found myself skim­ming and then out­right skip­ping. Salinger is for teenagers — sorry.

* Not sure what all the fuss is about. But then again I did­n’t real­ly get DFW either. *

The Partly Cloudy Patriot — Sarah Vowell

The title riffs on a Thomas Paine quote refer­ring sum­mer sol­diers and sun­shine patri­ots. Vow­ell takes on the inci­dences and char­ac­ters of Amer­i­can His­to­ry with insight and offers a rea­soned (if prop­er­ly biased — more on that lat­er) view of the present polit­i­cal and social cli­mate. I say prop­er­ly biased because any­one who does not have an opin­ion on what his­to­ry is try­ing to tell us as we look back on it isn’t read­ing hon­est­ly. His­to­ry isn’t dry facts and the unan­a­lyzed rota­tion of heads of state. Nor is it the sim­plis­ti­cal­ly glossed patri­ot­ic ver­sion that we are giv­en like so much pab­u­lum in grade school. SV is no sun­shine patri­ot. Nor is she so slav­ish­ly ded­i­cat­ed to the nation that she can­not see the dark­ness of the clouds that some­times cov­er our sun. She sees into both the good and bad that arise from each episode that she examines.

I par­tic­u­lar­ly liked her pieces about the above Paine quote and the very short and point­ed Rosa Parks C’est Moi (no you ain’t.) Also State of the Union which reads like a list poem.

* A charm­ing guide to Amer­i­can idiosyncrasies. *

Nothing in Reserve — Jack Lewis

I know Jack, he’s my writ­ing part­ner on what is a major project at the moment. As is com­mon with writ­ers who work togeth­er we know too much about each oth­er. Here are many things that I have sensed rum­blings of but nev­er had put into words for me. Some­times it’s a fright­en­ing place, the inside of Jack­’s head, but it’s also a place filled with life and hope.

* A war nar­ra­tive that isn’t real­ly about war. *

I Was Promised There Would be Cake — Sloane Crosley

I have a soft spot for these com­ing of age — the age being 25 or so — essays. They take place dur­ing the sec­ond great rein­ven­tion of the self. (The first being some­where in high school when you real­ize that your par­ents don’t get the final word on who you are.)
The essays are pret­ty pre­dictable. At least if you are a mid­dle class, col­lege edu­cat­ed straight woman. No, I’ve nev­er been the unin­ten­tion­al maid-of-honor at a long-lost high school friend’s wed­ding. Though there was that one grade school friend who includ­ed me in her wed­ding because we had recent­ly recon­nect­ed by acci­dent and were still explor­ing a nos­tal­gic con­nec­tion. It all came to noth­ing in the end. We were both still geeks but the focus of our geek­ing had diverged to the point where we had lit­tle to say to each oth­er, and a friend­ship can­not sur­vive on nos­tal­gia alone.

There are moments of pure light here. The descrip­tion of the Chris­t­ian sum­mer camp that her Jew­ish par­ents inad­ver­tent­ly sent her to as a clus­ter­fuck of rit­u­al send me slam­ming back in time to when I sat in a din­ing hall with all of my friends singing both hymns and the gross­ly mor­bid “The Great Ship Titanic”

In oth­er essays she locks her­self out of two apart­ments in a sin­gle day (the haz­ards of mov­ing), vol­un­teers at the But­ter­fly exhib­it in the Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry (brief and unsuc­cess­ful) and deals, not well, with a pas­sive aggres­sive mon­ster of a first boss.
She is both what I was and what I want­ed to be when I was 25. Though would­n’t it be nice to see essays from  some­one who isn’t col­lege edu­cat­ed and work­ing publishing?

* an all day nos­tal­gia suck­er for mid­dle class women of a cer­tain age *

Pulphead — John Jeremiah Sullivan

Lots of music here. Also some his­to­ry and crit­i­cism. The star­ring piece is the first piece. A tale of rock and roll, fun­da­men­tal­ism and a big RV, as Sul­li­van vis­its the largest Chris­t­ian music fes­ti­val in the USA, nay the whole world — Cre­ation Fes­ti­val. A mega-church ver­sion of a rock fes­ti­val with Chris­t­ian Rock bands and tens of thou­sands of young Christ-loving fans. Sul­li­van’s take on the whole thing — while start­ing with an assump­tion of glib irrel­e­vance to the world at large becomes nuanced and empa­thet­ic as he meets var­i­ous con­cert goers and band members.

* Par­tic­u­lar­ly good if you like mod­ern music and obscure cor­ners of literature. *

I haven’t got any­thing writ­ten yet about the one book I lis­tened to in Feb­ru­ary, but con­sid­er­ing it’s the 3rd of April. Per­haps I’d bet­ter just get this out…

 

Books of December and January

A lot of Decem­ber and Jan­u­ary was tak­en up by read­ing tech­ni­cal books for a writ­ing project. So the recre­ation­al (?) read­ing took a back seat. Here’s the com­bined list.

Read:

M Train — Pat­ti Smith

Feels very impor­tant. I’m not sure why a book that fea­tures a lacon­ic cow­poke dream fig­ure and a lot of vis­it­ing ceme­ter­ies and grave sites should feel so impor­tant. But it does. I gave it to a friend who is in the mid­dle of read­ing it and points out that Pat­ti Smith is poet first. Poet­ry relies on a lot of tech­niques that more dense than those used in prose (few­er words, more obvi­ous struc­ture.) The need to dig deeply into each state­ment might be part of the appeal for me.

* I’ll be pon­der­ing this for a while. * 

A God in Ruins — Kate Atkinson

Fol­low on to her Life After Life. Sort of. It takes up the sto­ry of Ursu­la Tod­d’s younger broth­er Ted­dy who flew a Hal­i­fax for the RAF, crash land­ed in the sea, then again in Ger­many, and nev­er expect­ed to find him­self liv­ing through war, let alone into the late 20th cen­tu­ry and beyond. Life is a con­fus­ing place some­times and Ted­dy’s life has it’s odd — seem­ing­ly out-of-place moments. You’ll love his grand­daugh­ter and come to despise his daugh­ter (though I’m not cer­tain that the author means you to.) The end­ing two sen­tences are opaque to the point that I don’t under­stand them and I fol­lowed the book close­ly. (Yes, I could go look up some reviews and analy­ses and fig­ure it out, but do I want to? Not real­ly. Too much expli­ca­tion can be as bad as too little.)

* Sun and Moon are not just bad names for children. * 

My Life on the Road - Glo­ria Steinem

* Sad­ly dull. * 

 

Casablan­ca Screenplay

One of the greats. I read it most­ly to learn for­mat­ting for screen plays and to look at the struc­ture of the thing. I can judge the tim­ing of plot points bet­ter by pages that I can by minutes.

* Just watch it. * 

 

Song Dogs — Colum McCann

I read this years ago. The book I read this month is not the book I remem­ber. I could be wrong about which McCann I read. Or I could be a dif­fer­ent (old­er) read­er. This time the points of con­nec­tion and dis­con­nec­tion between the son and his father seemed entire­ly nat­ur­al. I’ve been told that you have to be care­ful read­ing McCann lest his voice infect your own work. I’ll nev­er sound like a middle-aged Irish guy. I don’t think. Even if I do not final­ly drop all of the extra­ne­ous hem­ming and haw­ing and qual­i­fy­ing that goes into my aver­age sen­tence. (See the word “final­ly” in the pre­vi­ous sentence.)

* a clas­sic of father/son awkwardness * 

Listened to:

Eliz­a­beth Gilbert’s Big Mag­ic again. Because I need­ed the boost. It is like­ly going to be a book that I revis­it reg­u­lar­ly. Odd that. I gen­er­al­ly hate self-actualization books.

 

 

Mycroft Holmes — Karem Abdul Jabar with Anna Waterhouse

It lacks the snap and smack and acer­bic wit that we asso­ciate with Sher­lock Holmes. And does­n’t play up to Mycroft being the smarter less socia­ble brother.

* Meh. * 

 

Radi­ance — Cath­erynne M. Valente

A world in which we have col­o­nized all of the plan­ets but movies are still shot on film and often with­out sound. There’s a mur­der(?) mys­tery at the heart of it. I got lost a whole bunch of times. But I liked what I could track well enough that I’m going to read the book. (Which I’ve just fin­ished doing as I write this and am grate­ful that it was my sec­ond attempt at the story.)

* I’d tell you about the cal­lowhales but that would spoil it for you. * 

The Bone Clocks — David Mitchell

Hav­ing been con­fused through much of the sto­ry when I read it — lis­ten­ing to it made it much clear­er. Espe­cial­ly the use of sep­a­rate nar­ra­tors for each of the six sec­tions. Which made the point of view changes more obvi­ous. A good sto­ry, but not deep or intel­lec­tu­al. Immor­tals fight­ing the vam­pires (in essence) isn’t any­thing new. Throw in a cli­mate change dri­ven world col­lapse at the end and … well that part seemed gra­tu­itous. Mitchell writes well but some­thing keeps me from lov­ing his work. Prob­a­bly the lack of orig­i­nal­i­ty in plot even though it is hid­den under an orig­i­nal or at least sophis­ti­cat­ed structure.

* is it pos­si­ble to fall in like with an author? * 

The Books of November

Listened to:

Big Mag­ic — Eliz­a­beth Gilbert

Good on cre­ativ­i­ty and she reads her own work nice­ly. Good enough that I start­ed lis­ten­ing to it again just a day or two ago.

* self-help worth your time *

Star­Dust — Neil Gaiman

YA nov­el about a mag­i­cal boy and a shoot­ing star girl. It’s Nice to see a boy as a magical-hero.

* the master *

Pump Six and Oth­er Sto­ries — Pao­lo Bacigalupi

The short sto­ries that came before The Windup Girl and The Water Knife. Some inter­est­ing insights into the world build­ing that went into both novels.

* good short fiction * 

Furi­ous­ly Hap­py — Jen­ny Lawson

Either you love The Blo­gess or you don’t. I think she’s hys­ter­i­cal. I can total­ly under­stand why some peo­ple don’t.

* only if you can laugh along with the men­tal­ly ill * 

Palimpsest — Cath­erynne Valente

The first CV that I ever read. Lush, chewy, sat­is­fy­ing prose. It’s not the eas­i­est sto­ry to fol­low but worth the trou­ble. And the way that she plays out geog­ra­phy as a sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted dis­ease is stunning.

* mag­i­cal real­is­m’s latter-day cousin *

Death­less — Cath­erynne Valente

Sev­er­al Russ­ian fairy­tales and leg­ends mashed togeth­er into the sto­ry of one girl/woman and her rela­tion­ship to the Tsar of Life. Tak­ing in the var­i­ous rev­o­lu­tions and wars of Rus­sia in the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry. It ends on an odd­ly hope­ful note for all of the dis­as­ter that befalls the main char­ac­ters. And it is a real­ly disaster-full book. Much clean­er more stream­lined writ­ing than a lot of CV’s more recent work. (Not count­ing her chil­dren’s books.)

* Utter­ly Russian *

Read:

The Ante­lope Wife — Lousie Erdritch

More about the Native Amer­i­cans of the Dako­tas. This one has a more chal­leng­ing nar­ra­tive struc­ture than Love Med­i­cine. Worth­while read from an author that I will con­tin­ue to seek out.

* worth the effort to piece togeth­er the nar­ra­tive threads *

The Sig­na­ture of All Things — Eliz­a­beth Gilbert

Botany is good. Multi-generational epics are good. Strong, if flawed, women are good. Adding them all togeth­er is good. The his­to­ry of a fam­i­ly her­itage of plant hunters and loves gone ter­ri­bly wrong. Ser­vice­able writing.

* if you have the time it’s worth your while *

You Are Badass — Jen Sincero

Yuck, just yuck. Read it based on a trust­ed friends rec­om­men­da­tion — “It’s not like any self-improvement book you’ve ever read.” It’s exact­ly like every self-improvement book I’ve ever read except with more swear­ing. The Laws of Attrac­tion are bull­shit — even when you dress them up with words like ‘bull­shit.’

* why am I even link­ing to this? *

What Poets are Like: Up and Down with the Writ­ing Life — Gary Soto

Some poet­ry, some prose, a lot of reflec­tions on a long career.

* light read­ing for writers *

Speak Easy — Cath­erynne Valente.

Sad­ly, I gave up on this one. The sto­ry of a 1920’s apart­ment build­ing and it’s denizens. It’s sup­posed to be a mash up of the twelve danc­ing Princess­es and the courtship of Zel­da and F. Scott Fitzger­ald. The exag­ger­at­ed jazz-age lan­guage was too hard to make it through to the sto­ry. And the sto­ry did­n’t real­ly appear. It’s all par­ty and apart­ment. I might go back and fin­ish it lat­er. But for the moment I need clean­er prose in my head. I think I am falling out of love with an author crush. But Palimpsest will always be with me.

* thank heav­en I did­n’t buy the lim­it­ed edi­tion hardback *

The Books of October

Late, because well, it’s late.

Books Read:

Library of Souls: The Third Miss Pere­grine Book — Ran­som Riggs

Not as good as the ear­li­er books in the tril­o­gy. You can tell in places that he’s added mate­r­i­al (gen­er­al­ly sen­tence or two of descrip­tion of the appear­ance of a char­ac­ter — a walk-on part as it were) that is based on need­ing to add a pho­to­graph at that point. The pho­tographs con­ceit has worn itself out. Oth­er­wise it’s good enough and enough like the oth­er books to make it a quick read. There are bet­ter books. A lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing as a fin­ish for the trilogy.
* only if you need to find out how the tril­o­gy ends *

Man’s Search for Mean­ing — Frankl

Not all that. Beloved by many. Reducible to “for life to be worth hang­ing onto in the face of evil and sep­a­ra­tion it has to have mean­ing”. How you find that mean­ing is left as an exer­cise for the read­er. We already knew this. I was dis­ap­point­ed I expect­ed some­thing con­sid­er­ably more pro­found about the nature of mean­ing in life.
* if every­one else is read­ing it, oth­er­wise skip it *

Con­sid­er the Lob­ster and Oth­er Essays — David Fos­ter Wallace
The god of foot­notes (I love a good foot­note) pon­ders the ways of the world and the moral impli­ca­tions of boil­ing lob­sters. Also some bits of lit­er­ary review The one on the mak­ing of Gar­ner’s Mod­ern Amer­i­can Usage is a live­ly waf­fle on the ques­tion of descrip­tive vs pre­scrip­tive gram­mar and dic­tio­nar­ies. His medi­a­tion on Frank’s biog­ra­phy of Dostevsky and his work in rela­tion to the Russ­ian philoso­phies of the day is of inter­est only to the weirdos in the crowd who read too many Russ­ian Roman­tics in high school and stud­ied phi­los­o­phy as under­grads — oh wait that’s me.
* if you love a good foot­note or won­der about lobsters… *

The Vir­gin Sui­cides — Jef­fery Eugenides

Weird­ly nar­rat­ed by a voice that uses “we” and pro­vides the point of view of a group of teenage (bare­ly) boys. The sub­ject of their obses­sion a group of five sis­ters, all of whom com­mit sui­cide over the course of one year. That sounds awful. But it’s not. You’ll come to love the girls and to sym­pa­thize with the boys — who are drawn into a mys­tery that goes beyond the rea­sons for the sui­cides and plumbs the depths of what it means to be an adolescent.
* worth your time. can’t speak to the movie. *

Ana­grams — Lor­rie Moore

Bored by a third of the way through and dropped it. I pre­fer her short stories.
* Middle-aged aca­d­e­m­ic angst *

 

 

Cit­i­zen: An Amer­i­can Lyric — Clau­dia Rankin

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’m not too fond of oth­er peo­ple (a whole bunch of big name review­ers) telling me that I’m sup­posed to be impressed and react in a cer­tain way to some­one’s work. It leaves me cold. And I think that cold­ness affect­ed my per­cep­tion of this book. From the hood­ie on the cov­er to the vignettes of every­day racism as expe­ri­enced by the poet, the point of the col­lec­tion of poems is obvi­ous. The per­son­al­iza­tion of racism in the US makes an impres­sion. If you’re a ten­nis fan or know a ten­nis fan Rank­in’s per­spec­tive on Ser­e­na Williams’ expe­ri­ences is worth read­ing. There are oth­er pieces that spoke to me. But some parts — the video scripts in par­tic­u­lar — that are so mud­dled that I could­n’t keep what was going on straight.
* prob­a­bly required reading *

Non-Required Read­ing — 2014 — Daniel Han­dler ed.

How can a bunch high school stu­dents chose such an excel­lent col­lec­tion of writ­ing? Sto­ries, poems, non-fiction pieces and some that flit between all of these. There are a cou­ple of clunk­ers that show the youth of the edi­to­r­i­al board. But on the whole the qual­i­ty and depth of the cho­sen mate­r­i­al will restore your faith in the think­ing pow­er of today’s high school students.
* this series is always worth your time *

Invis­i­ble Cities — Ita­lo Calvino

Is this Venice? Or are these tru­ly cities of the imag­i­na­tion? — vari­a­tions on some eter­nal Pla­ton­ic City. The explor­er Mar­co Polo describes for the Emper­or Kubla Khan the cities that he has vis­it­ed in his trav­els. Each city is a small chap­ter per­haps even a prose poem. I love this book. I reread it every cou­ple of years to remind me how many vari­a­tions there on any one pat­tern. Also I love Calvi­no’s writing.
* How can I make you need to read this? *

Works and Days and Theogony — Hes­iod, trans Stane­ly Lombardo

Read excerpts from it in Fresh­man Human­i­ties. Revis­it­ing it as research for a screen play. There is more humor in it than I remem­ber. The trans­la­tion is good if a bit more casu­al in tone than I think of when I think of trans­lat­ed Greeks.
* real­ly, the Greeks could be funny *

 

Listened to:

Angel Mak­er — Nick Harkaway.
Romp­ing fun from the sec­ond world war to mod­ern Eng­land. With steam­punk bees, a fab­u­lous hero­ine, and a revolt­ing dog.

* Hark­away’s best *

The Books of September

Listened to:

The Night Cir­cus: Erin Morgenstern -
This is a repeat. I loved the book and enjoyed lis­ten­ing to it a cou­ple of years ago. I revis­it­ed it on the morn­ing walks ear­ly in Sep­tem­ber. I still love it. Ms. Mor­gen­stern has been some­what pub­licly work­ing on her next books for sev­er­al years. I hope to hell she’s not stuck with the sopho­more jinx. though she admits that Night Cir­cus took her a long time and many sub­stan­tial revi­sions to get right.

The Name of the Rose: Umber­to Eco -
I love Eco. This was the first of his nov­els that I read years ago and I remem­bered lik­ing it. Now, not so much. He’s as dis­cur­sive as Stephen­son but the detours and expli­ca­tions of the here­sies of the 13th (?) cen­tu­ry sim­ply did not hold my atten­tion in the same way that Stephen­son’s digres­sions on the nature of mon­ey and the bank­ing econ­o­my or the arcana of cryp­tog­ra­phy did. Clear­ly I skipped the dull parts when I read the book. That’s a test of how well a dis­cur­sive writer holds up their end of the author/reader bar­gain. Can you lis­ten to the work? Because when you’re lis­ten­ing all the parts get equal weight (time) and there is no way to skim the dull bits. A les­son to learn for writers.

Ready Play­er One: Ernest Cline / nar­ra­tor: Wil Wheaton -
A clas­sic in the genre that I’ve nev­er both­ered to read because I’m not a game play­er. The last games I played were the text adven­ture games when they were first played on ter­mi­nals con­nect­ed to big com­put­ers in the labs at school.
Lik­able char­ac­ters and a stroll down late 80’s mem­o­ry lane. It does­n’t hurt that Wheaton has a real love for the book and the 80’s. It comes through in the narration.

Read:

The Poi­son­wood Bible: Bar­bara Kingsolver -
A mis­sion­ary fam­i­ly go to the Bel­gian Con­go in the ear­ly 1960’s as the colo­nial era ends. The nar­ra­tive is told in five voic­es, each of the women in the Price fam­i­ly get­ting to tell por­tions of the sto­ry. The voic­es are con­vinc­ing — though you’ll prob­a­bly hate read­ing (lis­ten­ing to) the old­est daughter.
I thought is was going to end at about 60% of the way through. When Mrs. Price and her three remain­ing daugh­ters (no, that is not a spoil­er you learn that one of the daugh­ters is “left in Africa” at the begin­ning of the book) escape the vil­lage and more impor­tant­ly the clutch­es of the hor­ri­ble mis­sion­ary Rev. Price. I think that the rest of the book is inter­est­ing, but it does­n’t have the nar­ra­tive impe­tus of the first half. There is too lit­tle inter­ac­tion between the remain­ing female mem­bers of the fam­i­ly. Through out the first half of the book the sto­ry was about the rela­tion­ship between those women. Then sec­ond half of the book the sto­ry is about the rela­tion­ship each woman has to her own past. Still… I sort of liked it. And I under­stand why it would be an Oprah pick. (Not all Oprah picks suck. Seri­ous­ly. But you can count on them to be cen­tered on rela­tion­ships between women.)

Sec­ond Hand Souls: Christo­pher Moore -
A follow-up to A Dirty Job. More about the a lit­tle girl who is Death and her helpers. It’s not quite as fun­ny as A Dirty Job, but it’s worth an afternoon.

The Dev­il in the White City: Erik Larson -
A ser­i­al killer at the 1893 Colum­bia Exhi­bi­tion in Chicago.
It’s a dull depic­tion of the killer and a pret­ty bor­ing retelling of the Fair as well. Of inter­est only in that you get to see FL Olm­st­ed work­ing at the end of this life and the cre­ation of the Fer­ris Wheel.
There are bet­ter ser­i­al killer books (even from this peri­od of time) and there are bet­ter his­to­ries of the Colum­bia Exhibition.
It’s also incred­i­bly poor­ly writ­ten, to wit, the only depic­tion of the ser­i­al killers psy­chopa­thy is giv­en as “those eyes” over and over and over again.

Marie Antoinet­te’s Watch: John Biggs -
A love­ly thing for watch geeks, or any­one who finds the inter­sec­tion of his­to­ry and tech­nol­o­gy fas­ci­nat­ing. Rec­om­mend­ed by William Gib­son who is a bit of a watch nerd. This book traces the his­to­ry of the most famous of the Breguet watch­es, the 160, orig­i­nal­ly com­mis­sioned for the French Queen and fin­ished decades after her death. Stolen from a muse­um in Israel in 1983 and returned under mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances in 2007.

Love Machine: Louise Erdrich -
A com­plex sto­ry about com­plex fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships set on the Chippe­wa reser­va­tion in North Dako­ta. A set of short sto­ries from mul­ti­ple points of view that show the rela­tion­ships between the char­ac­ters from dif­fer­ent points of view and let the read­er slow­ly come to under­stand more about the peo­ple and places involved. Per­haps more than the char­ac­ters them­selves know.

Life After Life: Kate Atkinson -
What that stu­pid movie Ground Hog day should real­ly have been about. We fol­low Ursu­la Todd, born on a win­ter’s night in 1910, through mul­ti­ple iter­a­tions of her life. In each one she makes a dif­fer­ent cru­cial deci­sion that either ends in her death or in a path that diverges from her pre­vi­ous life. I expect­ed to get bored by wan­der­ing along the same path so many times but Kate Atkin­son man­ages to reit­er­ate the events of pre­vi­ous lives with­out retread­ing ground. Lives span the first and sec­ond world wars and on almost into the 21st cen­tu­ry. Only once did the sto­ry veer off into “no real­ly?” territory.

Tom­cat in Love: Tim O’Brien -
Pro­fes­sor of lin­guis­tics, Thomas Chip­per­ing is a very unlik­able man. He thinks of him­self as a con­nois­seur of women. But also as faith­ful man who has been wronged all his life. The men­tal gym­nas­tics that goes through to main­tain his self-image are laugh­able. In a dark­ly com­ic way.
I like O’Brien’s writ­ing. I did­n’t like Chip­per­ing — you aren’t sup­posed to like him but you are sup­posed to empathize with his ongo­ing attempts to keep his self-image intact in the face of increas­ing evi­dence of his infi­deli­ties and respon­si­bil­i­ty for all of the mis­for­tunes that befall him. I could­n’t quite man­age it. The book is worth read­ing none the less for the writ­ing and the weird bits were the nar­ra­tor goes off on tan­gents about how indi­vid­ual words have come to have their mean­ings twist­ed for him.

Birds of Amer­i­ca: Lor­rie Moore -
Short sto­ries by one of Amer­i­ca’s mas­ters. Real­ism, if you like that sort of thing you’ll like the book. She’s one of my models.

 

Mid­dle­sex: Jef­fery Eugenides -
The first line of this book is:

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remark­ably smog­less Detroit day in Jan­u­ary of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emer­gency room near Petoskey, Michi­gan, in August of 1974.

What is the mean­ing of gen­der? Is it fixed at birth? Set by upbring­ing? Or flu­id through out our lives? Big ques­tions that are nev­er real­ly defin­i­tive­ly answered. Which is rather the point of the book. It’s also a sprawl­ing Greek saga of three gen­er­a­tions. With lots of enjoy­able char­ac­ters and well hid­den secrets.

—-

I am still look­ing for a tran­scen­dent book. One that sur­pris­es me with both it’s writ­ing and it’s sto­ry. Haven’t got­ten there on any­thing late­ly except per­haps the Lor­rie Moore short sto­ries and Mid­dle­sex — though nei­ther reach­es all the way to tran­scen­dent. Only close.

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